Editing
by Matril
Summary: Lizzie Bennet Diaries. When Lizzie edits her own videos, her choices reveal things about her. Especially in regards to her changing feelings about William Darcy.
1. Chapter 1

_What the heck is this? Don't worry, for those of you wonderful readers following Firsts - I have not abandoned it, and a new chapter should be coming up in a day or two. But this thing, oh my. I got the idea and started and just couldn't seem to stop. It's kind of introspective, more about Lizzie's thought process than plot points and dialogue. Yeah. It's largely focused on Lizzie's changing views of Darcy, but since she would have edited a lot of stuff in her videos, other stuff does show up. And I'm not totally confident about the timeline for some of these things. Sometimes I had to just guess or speculate. _

42-57

Editing her own videos after Charlotte left for Collins and Collins was a miserable experience – partly because Lizzie wasn't quite as good at it as she claimed to be, but mostly because every time she pulled up the editing program, it reminded her of what had happened. Charlotte's stupid, selfish decision and the ugly fallout. The barbs they had exchanged, all the more cutting because they knew each other so well and therefore knew exactly what hurt the most.

The editing itself wasn't so bad, though, even if she knew her viewers would notice a slightly clumsier quality to her videos. Looking back, she had no real regrets about her editing choices. (Unless she counted the desire to edit a certain silver-tongued, two-faced swimming coach entirely out of existence.)

After she and Charlotte made up, editing wasn't so bad. Even when Charlotte was too busy to lend a hand, her absence didn't have that awful finality it once had. And Lizzie was definitely getting better at it, probably about as good as Charlotte. Okay, maybe not quite.

Things got more complicated once Darcy showed up.

58

It was hard enough getting through the care packages video with Fitz. Just having to hear the story again made her so angry she couldn't even keep the cursor steady. Fitz was so happily clueless. She yelled at his cheerful face, but her anger was quickly redirected to the proper place. She _hadn't_ been paranoid; she had actually _under_estimated just how interfering and controlling and judgy and heartless Darcy could really be.

She left in pretty much the whole conversation, taking a sort of grim pleasure in being thoroughly vindicated in her opinion of that jerkface.

59

A jerkface with the worst possible timing. Not only did he show up right when her hatred for him had reached its absolute apex, but she was also in the middle of filming one of her own personal videos, videos he had no place in and no business knowing about.

Okay, so maybe it was her fault he knew about them now.

Editing that video was quite a doozy. She was shaken to the core by his declaration, stupefied that they could have such completely different views of each other and of their heated interactions. The last thing she wanted was to replay their conversation and relive her shock, confusion and anger. But she had no choice. Charlotte was too busy to help edit, and Lizzie was in no frame of mind to film a new video at the last minute. In the end, she just used the footage leading up to his appearance, including Ricky and Charlotte's ridiculous costumes – she needed a good laugh right now – and her perusal of Jane's sad messages.

The video was almost ready; she just needed a good way to end it. She let her final rant play out, ready to cut it off right there – and there he was, his stupid torso and his staccato rap on the door and his "Excuse me, Lizzie," full of self-importance and stiffness.

Holy crap, he was nervous. _Nervous._ She didn't like seeing that emotion in him; it made him almost human. Her stomach twisted up unpleasantly. At that moment currently frozen on her screen, he had no idea what he was about to face. The torrent of wrath about to be unleashed upon him.

No. No _way _was she going to start pitying Darcy. If he was that ignorant of how she really felt, so _arrogant_ as to assume she would respond happily to his declaration, then he deserved a harsh rejection. And he had probably only done it in the first place to gratify his enormous ego. Whatever he might imagine, he couldn't really be in love with her. Someone as selfish and proud as that wasn't capable of genuine love. Lust, maybe, though she was sure there were much prettier girls who would be happy to throw themselves at a rich man, so why had he come to her?

She was really not enjoying this line of thought. Really, really, not enjoying it.

She didn't want to think about it anymore. She kept in that torso shot, just a few seconds of it. She saved the final cut, closed the program and put it all away before she could change her mind. She'd seen it too many times already.

When the video went up the next day, she tried to go about her usual business and not think about anything to do with Darcy. It should have been fairly easy, since she didn't see a trace of him all day and she had plenty to keep her distracted with her reports on inane "Better Living" tutorials and lousy reality shows – but she underestimated her viewers. That brief torso glimpse had the comments section exploding, not to mention the dozens of tweets they were sending her, begging her to show more Darcy. What was wrong with these people? Had they not been listening all this time about what a thoroughly repulsive, unlikable person he was?

Well, maybe she would show them the rest, and then they'd see.

Thing was, the video might make Darcy look bad, but it didn't exactly paint a flattering picture of her either. She was right about what she said; she didn't regret it – but she was hardly at her best while yelling at the top of her lungs at the man she despised. Not to mention losing her head at the end and mentioning her videos.

There was also the problem of legality. Darcy knew about the videos now – at least, she had mumbled something about it after shutting off the camera, and he would have put the pieces together fairly easily after he left – but he certainly hadn't given her permission to include him in them. Was he the sort of person who would sue? And she had imagined things were complicated when Bing thought they were recording letters to Charlotte!

60

When Wednesday rolled around, she plunked herself down in front of the camera and tried to come up with something to talk about, anything that wasn't Darcy. It was a lost cause. Who was she kidding? Even she couldn't think of anything other than Darcy, even if her thoughts were miles away from her viewers'. She finally taped something in between a preface and a warning, then tacked it in front of the remainder of Sunday's video. Editing was easy after that. She left the whole conversation intact, right up until the deer-in-the-headlights moment when she shut off the camera.

What difference did it make when it came to Darcy? If he was going to sue her, he already had plenty of material to justify it – 59 videos worth of insults and defamation. Did it count as defamation if it was true? Lizzie groaned, shoved her laptop aside and buried her face in her arms.

She posted it. In for a penny, in for a pound.

After that, she swore she would spend the rest of the day off the Internet. She didn't need to see the comments section explode again; she didn't need to see the rampant speculation that strangers were making over her personal life. She ignored her Twitter account, stayed miles away from Youtube, and only gave her email a quick perusal to make sure she wasn't missing any important, non-Darcy related business.

She thought it would be a little safer the next day, when some of the furor had died down, but then she had an entirely unexpected distraction in the form of a new Twitter follower. If she hadn't noticed it herself, her helpful fans were quick to point it out to her. Well, Darcy would definitely know about her videos now.

She found herself watching for any fresh tweets from him – no, she certainly didn't follow him _back_, but she could keep on eye on him anonymously – and taking a morbid curiosity in the cryptic messages that followed. It could have been about her videos – it probably was – but he was so vague and odd about it. Angry? Annoyed? Disgusted? She couldn't even begin to guess.

61

It put her in a very sober, anxious mood when she started filming her next video. At least Charlotte finally had a little bit of spare time. Lizzie really needed her bestie's sensible point of view to balance out her panic. She just wished Charlotte had stayed there when Darcy showed up, provided a buffer or something. Instead, the rest of the video was one big awkward mess.

Lizzie wanted to scrap all of it, but once again she was too distracted (this time by a certain hand-written letter) to put together a different video, and she supposed her viewers would once again be expecting some sort of follow-up to the last mess she put online. Charlotte offered to edit it, but Lizzie felt somehow that she needed to take this on herself, like paying penance.

While it was actually happening, she had been too distracted by her panic when Darcy showed up to notice any real change in him. Now, watching it second-hand, she was struck by the alteration. She hadn't realized how slowly he entered the office, how he waited a moment before speaking up. He didn't respond to Charlotte's awesome declaration about Jane, but then he didn't seem angry or annoyed with her either. Lizzie looked at her own wary face, tensed as if expecting some explosion. But there was no explosion. Why did he zero in on the two mildest insults in all her videos, when he could have brought up so many worse ones? Why did he say he didn't care about it? Was he really so feeling-less that no amount of insults could bother him? No, the video before this one offered evidence enough that he was capable of anger.

She found herself replaying parts just to try to guess what the heck was going on beneath that impassive face of his. There was a moment, less than a second, when the slightest of dimples actually appeared on his face. Why in the world would he smile? He was utterly incomprehensible.

Well, there was a little more to comprehend now that she had that letter. She had been comprehending it, so to speak, on a fairly obsessive basis. Between replays of the video, she would pick it up and read another passage, sometimes in a fury that he still hadn't apologized about Jane and Bing, other times in a haze of embarrassment that she had defended George Wickham when she clearly didn't know the whole story. Not that she entirely trusted Darcy's account – but somehow, the pieces fit together a lot more neatly than they ever had with George's tale.

The actual editing was minimal, like the last video, but she watched this one a lot more before finally shutting down the program. She just couldn't reconcile the stiff man on her screen with the person who had written pages upon pages of heartfelt – was it really heartfelt? Was she really using that word to refer to _Darcy_? – personal accounts of a broken friendship and a severely wounded sister.

She watched him walk out the door, pause, then keep going. She watched it about ten times as if she could uncover some hidden meaning in it. Was he going to say something else? He had apologized. He apologized again in the letter, not about Jane but at least about making Lizzie's visit unpleasant. And then he hesitated before leaving. What was going on in his head? She wanted to know, and feared it. Feared the possibility that she had been utterly and completely wrong.


	2. Chapter 2

_So there's five chapters total, and they'll go up fairly quickly because I've already finished it. This moves pretty fast from Collins and Collins to Pemberley because, well, Darcy. Not that I don't love the other __plotlines in the LBD, but again, Darcy. ;)_

62-64

Editing her videos after that was less of an ordeal, because she learned to censor herself while filming. Even when Charlotte tried to pry about the letter, even when Caroline showed up with some convoluted plan to learn Darcy's secrets, Lizzie kept her mouth shut about it. And about Darcy, by and large. She didn't need her audience to know the extent of the turmoil in her mind, and she certainly didn't need Darcy to know, on the chance that he was now a part of that audience. When she perused her footage after filming, she was pleased to find very little that needed to be removed.

65-76

Somehow, even an earth-shattering thing like Darcy's declaration of love faded to the background as other concerns began to fill her life – getting Charlotte home in time for Thanksgiving, becoming acquainted with New Jane, and preparing for the terrifying prospect of Lydia turning 21. There was a little blip, thanks to Charlotte's conniving, about what Darcy's letter had said about George; still, Lizzie thought she handled that about as well as could be expected. Hypothetically speaking. She was also appropriately guarded about Darcy during her costume theater with Mary, and didn't elaborate on any supposed virtues in spite of all her cousin's curiosity.

It wasn't until the blowout with Lydia that she had any real trouble managing her videos. She thought she was perfectly calm and reasonable while editing and posting the footage of their fights, but a good number of her viewers seemed to think otherwise. As many of them sided with Lydia as sided with her. Were they not seeing the same thing that she was? This was ridiculous, all this anger and hurt over a book – a very thoughtful gift, after all! She wondered if she should have posted the videos at all.

She wondered if she had been trying to use the Internet as a safety net again. Maybe she was just angry that no one had been there to catch her.

She needed a distraction. And she got one.

77

With Charlotte on an Internet-free retreat, Lizzie had no choice but to edit all her videos at Pemberley. And most of the time, she really missed her bestie's helpful suggestions and expertise. But some of these videos – certain videos containing a certain CEO – some videos Lizzie was glad she was editing alone.

78

Watching the footage of Gigi shoving Darcy into the room with her, Lizzie was flooded with a bewildering array of impressions. Had he changed that much, or was it just the change in her perspective after months of re-reading that letter and re-thinking all their past encounters? She found herself pulling up the two previous videos containing Darcy and comparing all of them. No, it wasn't just her. He was definitely warmer, less stiff (even when he had good reason to be awkward thanks to Gigi), letting her take the lead in the halting conversation, accommodating her practically to the point of bending over backwards.

Why? It couldn't be for her sake, certainly. It would be nothing but vanity to assume she had become some kind of special exception. He was nice to his employees; they all loved him. She thought for a foolish instant that his reference to unforgiving hills was a kind of indicator that he was still watching her videos, but that was ludicrous. What use would he have for her videos at this point? It must be a phrase that he and his sister used a lot, that was all.

So why the change? Maybe – maybe he was just really nervous before, thinking he was in love with her, and now that that illusion had been done away with, he could be normal around her.

Lizzie had to notice her own change in demeanor as well. Had she really looked at him that much? She hadn't been aware of it at the time, nor of the little nervous smiles that kept popping onto her face. Their few seconds of making eye contact seemed to stretch on into an hour. Maybe that was because she kept pausing the video right then and scrutinizing it beyond any practical editing purposes.

She didn't cut any of their meeting, though she was severely tempted to edit out that stupid arm-touch at the end. It was awkward, but it was too closely connected to her "thank you," and she did want to leave that in. She had changed too; somehow she wanted her viewers to know that. No one had seemed inclined to condemn her for judging Darcy so harshly, but she couldn't help feeling like they were thinking it. At least some of them. Maybe the same people who thought she had been in the wrong about Lydia.

So the arm-touch stayed, and the thanks, and the whole meeting, painfully awkward but somehow still better than the last.

79

She definitely missed Charlotte when she was trying to puzzle out Bing Lee's unexpected appearance, and the ethics of him _still_ not knowing he was part of an online video diary, but somehow she managed to edit that video and move on.

Editing the next video was a different matter.

80

The footage was taped sometime in the late afternoon, and she didn't have too much going on with her shadowing that day, so she should have had ample time to get the video ready for the next day. She barely got it done by the deadline.

She found herself pausing the video every two seconds, finding some fresh nuance in his expression or the tone of his voice. Her video-self was baffled throughout most of their exchange, trying to understand all the things they were delicately _not_ talking about, and if she had hoped that reliving the conversation would clarify matters, she was sadly mistaken.

Just when she had convinced herself he was only talking about Bing, his tone guarded only because he was embarrassed for being called out on his meddling, she would rewind and rewatch and wonder what was hiding beneath the words. She replayed the moment when he first appeared in the hat and bowtie five consecutive times before she had to admit she wasn't looking for any hidden meaning at all; she just liked the subtle smirk on his face. She did the same thing during his discourse on hyper-mediation. Never had she so enjoyed the sound of the word _verisimilitude._ Over and over again, until she couldn't even pretend she was doing any editing.

That footage in the hallways, though. Their height difference seemed like a living symbol of the distance between them, the wildly successful CEO and the silly nobody who used to make fun of him on her dumb little videos. She would have greatly preferred not to include that, but how else could she explain how he came to be her partner in costume theater? She trimmed it, at least, leaving just enough of their exchange for expository purposes.

And he actually did it; he went and found a hat and tie (Where? Did he keep a spare bowtie in a desk drawer; did he really wear that hat more often than one unfortunate day at a wedding?) and he put them on. For her. If he hadn't voluntarily done it himself she doubted she would have dared offer him her own version of the costume. She still wasn't sure why she had brought it to Pemberley; she hadn't done any impressions of Darcy since he appeared in her videos. It was just easier to pick up her bag of costumes and lug the whole thing with her than to ponder whether to leave certain items at home.

She might be doing a little too much pondering right now. With only the first third of the video ready, she took a break and checked to see what sort of questions her viewers were submitting for the next Q and A. That was a bad idea. Half the questions were about Darcy. _Have you talked to him since Gigi pushed him into the room with you? Do you run into him all the time now that you're at his company? IS HE STILL IN LOVE WITH YOU?_

She closed the browser window with a shudder, not wanting to imagine what would happen if she featured those questions on her bonus video. Well, back to editing.

Several hours later, she still hadn't arrived at a cut that she felt comfortable with, her vision had gone blurry from staring at the screen, and she was vaguely aware that it was well past dinnertime and she was close to starving. In resignation she stopped for the day, resolving to set her alarm early enough to give her time to finish.

Lizzie went to bed early, but it didn't matter. She couldn't fall asleep till well after midnight. Six-thirty came way too soon, accompanied by a heartless buzz from her alarm and the fuzzy realization that she had left her laptop open on the nightstand with footage of Darcy's face staring at her. Not real-her, video-her. She had noticed that he was almost always in profile, his gaze directed at her rather than the camera. She couldn't explain this away by the disproven thinks-she's-a-traffic-accident theory. She couldn't explain it at all.

She was running out of time. In disgust she forced herself to power through it, to view the video as dispassionately as any regular old footage of two people talking. With just an hour to spare, she finished. It was oddly anti-climatic. She was probably reading too much into it after all. He was being civil, friendly, nothing more. At nine o'clock, she posted it with remarkable calm.

And then, watching the video online, she discovered something entirely new. Somehow in the midst of all her confusion about Darcy himself, she hadn't registered a significant detail. The red-hot rush that came whenever she thought about her sister and Bing was gone, dissipated into nothing. She couldn't say that she _agreed_ with what Darcy had done, but she could see his perspective for the first time, and she might even be on the way toward forgiving him. Of course it was really more important whether Jane forgave him, or Bing, but Lizzie had no control over that. Her own anger and hurt was gone.

Somehow she managed to find a few safe questions to answer during her bonus video, which she filmed shortly before going to lunch with Gigi. Gigi didn't mention that morning's video overtly, but Lizzie could tell from her smug little smiles that she was pleased with it. She wasn't sure what to do about Darcy's sister trying to play matchmaker for him, wondering whether this invitation to tour the city was just another ploy to get them alone together. But she liked Gigi for her own sake and hated to disappoint her.


	3. Chapter 3

_This one ventures a little more out of the "Lizzie edits" territory, but I couldn't help speculating about some of that tour of SF - they're just so ridiculously relaxed and comfortable in 83 compared to previous videos, so what happened? Don't know for sure, but here's one version. Oh, and I'm frankly baffled by the timeline of when they filmed 83. This is my best guess._

81-82

She needed a good day after that next week, dealing with Bing's awkward, not-so-subtle questions about Jane as well as Gigi's tearful confessional. Editing both of those videos was a painful process. From a practical standpoint, the cuts were simple, straightforward. Emotionally, it was brutal. She found herself tearing up when Gigi did, and missed Lydia so much it was like a blow to the stomach. After that, spending a day with Darcy couldn't possibly be that hard.

It turned out that their tour of San Francisco was one of the best days of her life.

Gigi was a blast, making silly jokes and dragging Lizzie from one location to another with a manic energy that made her miss Lydia even more. She kept an almost non-stop stream of chatter, probably to overcompensate for the assumption that, at any moment, she might leave Darcy and Lizzie alone to awkward silence.

The thing was, they didn't have any awkward silences. Silences, yes. Gigi did have to take the occasional bathroom break, not to mention every hour or so she would bend over her phone and post pictures on Twitter while Lizzie and Darcy waited and enjoyed the view of whatever landmark they were currently surveying. But those silences didn't feel awkward. They felt companionable. Once she even caught him smiling, just a particle, when Gigi positively crowed with delight and said, "Oh, I know the _perfect_ caption for this!" Their eyes met, she smiled too, and then she thought it was a good thing that Gigi was otherwise occupied.

They weren't always silent. Darcy had a vast knowledge of the city (of course he did) and he would share particularly obscure details to fill in the holes of Gigi's general narration. If Lizzie had a question, he took care to answer it thoughtfully, even if it was something silly or inconsequential.

Then there was one exchange that was anything but inconsequential. Gigi was on her second bathroom break, Lizzie was finishing off a heavenly sample of Ghirardelli chocolate, and Darcy said out of nowhere, "Thank you, by the way."

"What?" she asked around her mouthful of candy, eyebrows raised.

He looked at her soberly. "For what you did for Gigi."

She swallowed, her throat burning from something other than extra-dark chocolate. "Oh. The video? I didn't – I didn't think you'd like that."

"I didn't," he said frankly, "but that's irrelevant. Clearly she needed to speak about it, and if your videos offered the right venue for that, then I am grateful."

"I just sat and listened," she said, trying to shrug it off. His eyes could be just a little too intense sometimes.

"That is what she needed. You're a good listener."

Was her face reddening? She hoped he would just attribute it to sunburn. "Not good enough, if you ask Lydia."

"I was very sorry to see that," he said quietly. "But I'm sure you'll find a way to reconcile."

Why was her heart beating faster than normal? Was it because Darcy, who had practically raised his little sister, had faith in her older-sibling skills? Was it that warm way he was looking at her, or the fact that he had just paid her several compliments?

She didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed when Gigi reappeared and ended their conversation. She only knew she was glad it wasn't something recorded on her videos that she would have to analyze and rewatch and edit.

Before the excursion was even over, Gigi invited her to go out for karaoke the next evening. Lizzie didn't dare ask if her brother was coming along, but then she didn't have to. His grimace was answer enough.

"William actually has an _amazing_ singing voice," Gigi said, tugging his arm playfully, "but you'll never hear it unless you can catch him alone."

Lizzie restrained the urge to giggle uncontrollably at the thought of Darcy prancing across a karaoke stage, then blushed again, for some reason, at the phrase _catch him alone_.

Her mind refused to settle all day Sunday. She knew she needed to sit down and make a video, but the only topic that mattered was the one she didn't dare touch. She wanted to talk about their tour of the city; she wanted to gush about it and recount every little detail. But she also wanted to keep it private, as if she knew that she would never be able to censor herself, that she would be forced to edit the footage so severely it would be rendered an incoherent, choppy mess.

Before she knew it, it was time to meet Gigi for karaoke and she still had no video. She promised herself she would shoot something afterwards, even just a two or three minute recounting of their evening, but when she got home it was all she could do to change into pajamas before falling into bed.

Another early morning, even worse than the last time. Not a second of footage to work with. She went into Pemberley before seven with a single desperate idea and contacted Gigi when she couldn't screw up the courage to ask Darcy directly.

83

He came, was willing and ready, and surpassed her every expectation. She didn't know if the change had happened during their tour, or more gradually since she first came to his company, but somehow she had come to feel easy and comfortable around him – at least, as comfortable as she could ever be with those intense piercing eyes upon her. She already knew he could make her smile, but when did he gain the ability to make her laugh? Not just a chuckle, either. A gut-busting, eyes-tearing-up kind of guffaw. She was still overcome with laughter as she shut off the camera and chortled out her thanks.

He just pulled off the wig and shrugged, his mouth twitching in his quiet version of pleasure. "I hope you have a good day, Lizzie. Let me know if you need anything else."

She had to scramble to film an intro once she realized the video began rather abruptly with Darcy's appearance, but that was entertaining on its own, since she couldn't resist trolling her viewers just a little. She was in a good mood and it probably showed. So what? No need to censor that.

Then she had to hurry through the editing. Luckily, most of it didn't give her too much trouble. She kept it almost wholly in its original form, just trimming the bit when he left to get his costume. But there was one moment near the beginning that gave her pause. She had gone to shut the door, and on the way she touched his shoulder, just for an instant. It certainly wasn't a calculated move on her part. He was right there, and she was passing by, and somehow her hand ended up on his shoulder and maybe she could still kind of feel the sensation tingling on her fingertips –

But this wasn't about her. It was Darcy. Coming from any other person, it would have looked like a non-reaction; an impassive, unaffected face. But now that she knew him better – flattered herself that she was learning to read his expressions – she could see it was a highly-charged response. He was not comfortable. Apparently he concealed it well; he seemed perfectly at ease throughout most of the video. But her touch had made him stiffen, then blink, then shift ever so slightly. She had missed it, and by the time she sat down again, he was back to normal.

Better to cut it altogether, right? It was – weird. Maybe he was disgusted by her. No, that couldn't be. Maybe he just had a thing about personal space. She probably should have been more considerate about that. But when she moved the cursor to get rid of the shoulder-touch, she couldn't bring herself to remove it entirely. She trimmed out most of his response and considered it a compromise. Though she wasn't entirely sure who she was compromising with.

84

Wednesday came, and with it a shiny new phone, a cheery intro and a visit from Darcy mid-video.

Then she got the call from Charlotte, and nothing else mattered.

She had plenty of time to edit once she got home, but very little emotional wherewithal to deal with it. She fiddled with the footage for a while, fixating on little things like Darcy's hand on her back or her crumpling face as Charlotte's news sank in. On the awful swiftness with which the mood shifted from exhilaration and anticipation to horror and despair. Her hand moved over the keyboard, then fell listlessly to her lap.

Eventually she had to give up and send it to Charlotte.


	4. Chapter 4

_Ah, delicious angst. ;) Don't worry; the happy conclusion is coming up next._

85-88

Charlotte did most of the editing during those nightmarish weeks. Lizzie almost decided not to make any videos at all, and then almost didn't post anything of what she recorded, but Charlotte pointed out that Lydia's obvious non-consent might deter at least a few people from giving any money to that awful, awful website. Lizzie had to agree. The days passed in a kind of painful blur, and she probably would have forgotten to eat or sleep if it weren't for steady people like Charlotte and Jane keeping her grounded.

And Lydia. Oh, Lydia. That was the hardest part about the videos, the main reason she had to ask Charlotte to do the editing. Seeing her baby sister transformed from her former vibrant self to this wounded, vulnerable stranger – it was too much. She couldn't detach herself and view the footage clinically; it was hopeless. She gave it all to Charlotte, and focused on giving Lydia everything she had failed to give her before.

She didn't censor herself when she filmed. She didn't even remember the camera was there most of the time. So when she emerged from the haze, when the website miraculously went down and Lydia began to heal and life started resembling something normal again, Lizzie was left with a lingering sense of exposure. She watched the videos from Pemberley and cringed at how openly she had behaved around Darcy. The looks, the leaning, the laughing – she was _flirting_ with him and she didn't even try to hide it. If he had called even once during the last two weeks she might have been okay with it – maybe – but he hadn't. And now she just looked like an idiot.

She didn't blame him. He owed her nothing. He had responded to her insults and rejections with kindness, he had accommodated her at his company in every regard, and he had even expedited her emergency trip home. After Collins and Collins he hadn't made any overtures. Sure, there were moments she would have interpreted that way before she left Pemberley, especially the invitation to the theater - but that interpretation just didn't match up with someone who hadn't contacted her in weeks. She could take a hint. He had been kind, nothing more. She couldn't accuse him of leading her on. She had chosen to behave that way toward him. It was all on her.

89

She had trouble sleeping. She tried everything; warm milk, soothing music, even the meditation routines her mother swore by. Nothing. One night as a last resort she filmed a video. Big mistake. The next day she woke up very late and was too bleary-eyed and grouchy to film anything else, so she had to make do with her late-night ramblings.

Being sleep-deprived was about as bad as being drunk. Why did she have to blab about Bing and make Jane miserable like that? And Jane was clearly not happy, though she tried to hide it with a dozen _ohs_ and nervous smiles. Lizzie cursed herself through gritted teeth as she reviewed the footage and tried to decide how much of this garbage to put online. At least she didn't mention Darcy. Pemberley was "nice." Well, that was pretty guarded for being sleepy-drunk. It could have been worse.

It could have been better, though.

90

When that insomnia video led to Bing's return, Lizzie was furious with herself. The last thing Jane needed, after finally reclaiming her life and getting over him, was to have him show up on her doorstep. Bearing snickerdoodles.

But this wasn't about Lizzie, or what she thought Jane deserved or what Bing didn't deserve. She shut off the camera, saving them from the embarrassment of private conversations caught on video, and saving herself the trouble of editing it out. It might not be very satisfying for her viewers – or for Lizzie – but maybe she was finally learning to let go of the crutch of the Internet.

When she edited the video and saw the footage of Bing waiting for Jane, her heart softened. Just a smidge.

91

Witnessing the Jane and Bing drama made Lizzie let her guard down a little too much. She ended up rambling about hypotheticals that seemed perfectly innocent when she was filming, but were all too revealing when she watched the finished video. Unfortunately, she didn't have the chance to review this one, because she was so excited for Jane and busy helping her pack that she sent the footage off to Charlotte without a second thought. It wasn't until she posted the video and watched her _what-ifs_ from an outsider's perspective that she realized how obvious it was. She considered calling Charlotte and demanding why she had left it all in, but that would be admitting that there was any subtext to begin with. And the more time passed without a word from Darcy, the more she was convinced it was better to keep her mouth shut.

92

This time she was glad she left the camera on, even though it genuinely was an accident. As long as Jane and Bing were okay with it, Lizzie was delighted to watch the footage of their reconciliation and the decision to be together in New York. Jane let her watch the video before she explained anything, so she got to enjoy Lizzie's shocked reactions to Bing dropping out of med school and other revelations. Then they brought the footage to Lydia and enjoyed it all over again. It wasn't an editing session so much as a last minute goodbye party, with plenty of laughter and tears. Lizzie couldn't think of a better way to send off their beloved older sister to her new life on the east coast.

93

With Jane gone and Lydia keeping away from the Internet, Lizzie found herself nervous to pick up the camera. All alone, she might be prone to say or do something dangerously revealing. She had been watching her old videos far too often lately, and it was making her vulnerable, unguarded. She thought when Charlotte showed up it would provide just the distraction she needed, but her bestie wasn't having it. She always did know Lizzie too well.

Lizzie said whatever she could think of to deflect Charlotte's probing questions, but viewing it afterwards, she could see how feeble her defenses were. She couldn't outright deny that anything meaningful had happened at Pemberley because the videos were right there to prove her wrong. She could try to say it didn't matter now, but the words didn't say nearly as much as her face. Every time Charlotte pressed her for the truth she got more and more distressed. She might as well yank her heart out of her chest and stick it to her sleeve with a sign on it: _This organ now belongs to William Darcy._

Charlotte refused to edit this one. "You need to face this head-on," she said. "But don't you dare cut it down to one minute. There's a lot of important stuff in there, and if you don't keep it, I'll put up my own version of it."

"That's blackmail," Lizzie said, but she accepted the challenge as a matter of pride.

She posted the video pretty much in its entirety just to prove that she could handle it.

94

After that, she never dared let her guard down. Back to self-censoring. When Lydia told her she wanted to appear in her next video, her concern was all for her sister, and she clung to that when Lydia dropped the bombshell. _Darcy_ took down the site, once again turning her worldview upside-down, but Lizzie shoved back all the implications and questions and focused on her sister.

She had nothing to be ashamed of when she reviewed the footage. Nothing that revealed the turmoil of feelings this revelation had churned up, no desperate messages directed at him – as if he would really keep watching the videos at this point! – just love for Lydia and ordinary, normal surprise at what Darcy had done.

Off camera, nothing felt ordinary or normal. She found herself visiting Pemberley Digital's website and monitoring Darcy's Twitter account on an hourly basis, looking for – what? Answers. Explanations. She found nothing to satisfy her, but she kept looking.

95

And good thing she had been practicing at remaining composed and guarded, because when Caroline came storming in, it almost broke down all of Lizzie's walls. The mere mention of Darcy was bad enough, but the accusations of seducing him almost made her choke. Somehow she kept it all clamped down and pretended any connection between her and Darcy was ridiculous. She responded to Caroline's claims with a poise that surprised even herself and somehow managed to extend an olive leaf at the end of the whole ordeal.

The aftermath was something else. Lizzie was literally shaking after Caroline flounced off. Part of her was furious at being accused of _seduction_, of all things, while another part wanted to know – well, she didn't go about intending to seduce him, but did it work?

The footage was fairly harmless, but there was a wordless moment after Caroline's initial accusation about Darcy. Lizzie's face, for just a second, betrayed her fear, her uncertainty. It made for an awkward cut, but she had to get rid of it.

She didn't have to cut anything when she talked about how Darcy would be avoiding her like the plague, but the words stung in retrospect. As far as she could tell, he _was_ avoiding her.

96

She was at a loss. She tried to film her video four or five times, talking about her thesis, about her final shadowing project, about Jane, about the weather, anything. They were all false starts. She tried to find someone to come in and be a costume theater partner, but Lydia needed space, Charlotte was in L.A. and Jane was in New York. She was alone, and her weeks of overt denial were staring her in the face.

So she sat there and talked to herself. Until she talked herself into something that would probably humiliate her till the end of time.

She was glad all the costume theater required clever edits. It gave her something to do while she waited for a phone call that might never come.


	5. Chapter 5

_So here it is. After all the angst, I've got an entire platter full of sappy, cheesy fluff. Hope you like it. Also, I enjoyed so much getting into Lizzie's head that I've started something similar from Darcy's perspective. Anyone interested?_

_Thanks again for reading and reviewing!_

97

The nice thing about hitting rock bottom was the feeling that she had nothing left to lose. When Charlotte showed up for their birthday, Lizzie knew exactly what to film for her video. She knew her viewers had been anticipating Darcy's call almost as much as she had, and after spending four days in miserable uncertainty, she couldn't help spreading the misery around with a big, gleeful fakeout.

Charlotte punctured her false cheer pretty quickly. She wasn't being cruel, though, just wise. She gently brought her around to a confession and after Lizzie broke down and let herself be honest and completely vulnerable, Charlotte was there to help her pick up the pieces.

She was also there to answer the door and send William Darcy into the den.

After, when Lizzie was curled up in his arms on the sofa, having long abandoned the camera and the stools she used for filming, editing was the last thing on her mind. At some indeterminate point between his arrival and the present moment he had changed from _Darcy_ to _William_, and she had transformed from a mopey, heartbroken mess to pretty much the happiest person on the planet. He was currently tracing a pattern up and down her arm, making her shiver, and she was trying to determine which parts of his face she hadn't kissed yet. Then her stomach let out a traitorous rumble.

"You're hungry."

She considered denying it, but lying at the very onset of their relationship was probably a bad precedent, even for something as insignificant as this. "Yeah. Are you?"

He shrugged. "Not especially. I had a meal on the plane ride. Although airline food isn't particularly fortifying…"

"Did you come straight here from the airport?" she wondered, the thought filling her with an absurd pleasure.

"Of course. You were the only reason I came here."

In the back of her mind she knew she was wearing a positively nauseating lovey-dovey expression, but as long as he didn't mind, she didn't either.

Finally dragging her gaze away from him, she pulled out her phone. "We can order something. What do you feel like?"

"Whatever you like."

"You know if you keep being obliging and agreeable all the time it's going to drive me crazy – oh, look. Charlotte tweeted at me."

He leaned closer to look over her shoulder, his breath tickling her neck. She only half-registered the words on her screen until he said, "Honey walnut shrimp?"

"What?" she said, her voice coming out far dreamier than she intended. "Oh. That was the Chinese that Charlotte ordered for us."

Comprehension dawned on his face. "I see. Well, I'm sorry you didn't get any."

She set down her phone, took both his hands and said, "I'm about to say something so sappy and sugary it'll probably make your teeth fall out. Just to warn you."

"All right," he said, a smile tugging the corners of his mouth.

Lizzie leaned close and whispered, "I got something much better than honey walnut shrimp."

His smile widened. "You're right. That was _very_ sappy." He gave her a short, sweet kiss that left her wanting more, but he pulled back and indicated her phone. "It's still not a replacement for food, though. Dinner?"

"Mmm." She blinked. "Just a second." With a wicked grin, she sent a reply to Charlotte's tweet. "_Happy bestie bday to TheCharlotteLu who deserves all the honey and the walnuts and the shrimp in the world_. There. Now let's order something."

A few minutes later, after they found a place that was still open this late and placed an order for more Chinese, Charlotte tweeted an incredulous response. Lizzie had to reply again. "What," she said aloud, "I can't make out with my boyfriend and also tweet? I'm a multitasker."

Since this was the first time she had called him her boyfriend, the occasion naturally called for more making out.

Charlotte's final tweet made them change direction just a little. "Send her things to edit," Lizzie said, looking at the screen thoughtfully. "Huh. Things to edit."

"Do you want to put all of that online?" William asked, his mouth contracting into a frown as he glanced at the camera.

"I…don't know. But how do you feel about it?"

"They're not my videos."

She let out a sound of exasperation. "That's not what I mean. I can only imagine how it must have felt when I put up those other videos of you – you know, the early ones." She fingered his tie, eyes downcast. "I didn't even consider your feelings when I exposed you to the entire Internet. I'm so sorry."

He lifted her face and ran his hand along her cheek. "Your apology means a great deal to me. But I understand. At that time you didn't believe me _capable_ of feeling."

"How does that make it better?" she demanded.

"You had good reason to assume I was incapable of decent feeling." He took a breath. "I was cold, standoffish, inconsiderate. In all my struggles over my growing feelings for you, it never occurred to me to show you any kindness or warmth."

"You did try a few times," Lizzie objected. "I just – didn't recognize it. I refused to see anything other than what I wanted to see."

"We were both gravely mistaken. We can agree on that." He pulled her close. "Perhaps we should just be happy we've both changed."

She rested her head on his shoulder. "Agreed. Now, what about the video?"

"I have no objections to being included in it." A soft sound escaped his lips, and she realized it was laughter. It was the first time she had ever heard it from him. "It paints me in a far better light than past videos. It may even be essential to redeeming my character."

"Well, from my viewpoint you were redeemed a long time ago, if you even needed redeeming in the first place. But my viewers will probably kill me if I didn't include some kind of resolution to that phone call." She sighed. "I like this, right now. Just the two of us. It's private. I don't know that I'm ready to make it public just yet. Maybe it can wait till Thursday."

"They'll be expecting a video tomorrow though."

"Mmm." She straightened, a grin lighting on her face. "Oh, I know. I have footage from before you showed up. Talking to Charlotte. It'll be a perfect lead-up."

William quirked an eyebrow. "Lizzie Bennet, are you intending to torture your viewers?"

"Maaaybe. Just a little. Would you like to see what we shot?" Without waiting for his reply, she hopped up from the sofa and went to get the camera and her laptop.

He was silent and stoic as he watched her tease the unseen audience, then bring Charlotte into the frame. His expression remained unchanged, but as the conversation progressed on the screen before them, he pulled Lizzie tighter and closer until she could hardly breathe. She paused the video just as his torso appeared.

"I'm so sorry," he said in a low voice, giving her that hypnotically intense gaze. "I had no idea how much pain I caused you."

"How could you know?" she said, easing back a bit. "I certainly wasn't being open about it."

"I wish I could have come sooner."

"Yeah. But it's in the past. Time to forget the bad and only remember the good, right?"

"It might be hard to forget the bad when you post videos like this."

"All right," she laughed, "it's not like it's erased from my memory. It just doesn't hurt anymore." She gave him a sideways glance. "On that note, do you want to see my browser history?"

He actually blushed. "Are you sure?"

Wordlessly, she opened the browser window and showed him.

She had looked up his name in the search engine a lot that week. Among other things.

She sent the footage to Charlotte with explicit instructions to end the video just after Darcy showed up. Then she spent the next three days in a glorious blur, coming up for air only long enough to cackle at the frustration of her viewers. Even William seemed to enjoy leaving Gigi and Fitz in the dark with the rest of them, evidencing a smugness that made him all the more irresistible.

98

It was impossible to keep a straight face while filming the intro to Thursday's video. Heartbreak was hard to suppress, but hiding her effervescent happiness? That was downright impossible. At least she managed not to openly giggle while pretending she wasn't going to show her viewers what happened. She didn't bother attempting a second, more stoic take – not with William smirking and smoldering on the sidelines.

She kept in all the remaining footage for Thursday's video. A nice, brief editing session left her plenty for time for other more enjoyable activities.

99

William Darcy was full of surprises. Last-year-Lizzie would have scoffed at the very notion of Darcy donning a ridiculous wig to play costume theater, or scooping his girlfriend up in his arms to make a playfully dramatic finish to her Q&A video. (Not to mention the idea that _she_ would be that girlfriend.) There was so much more to him, so much warmth and intensity and _humor_ that she never could have imagined. After a full week spent almost entirely in his company, she felt like she had really come to know him at last. And then he took her completely by surprise again.

"You want to take over my video?"

He ducked his head. "Not the entire thing, necessarily. Just the introduction."

She finished adjusting the camera and stepped back. "Of course you can, if you really want to. But why?"

He took her hand. "Because in each of your previous videos that I've appeared in, I've been an intruder. Sometimes you invited me in, and sometimes I was less than welcome, but either way I was an outsider trying to make my way in. I would like, just once, to present myself as something other than an outsider in your life."

"Well, that's fair." She stood up on her toes and kissed his cheek. "Go ahead. Break a leg."

He was adorably awkward, and she had to come in and rescue him after less than a minute – as well as resolve the six-days versus one-week debate – but when he offered his modified version of her catchphrase, she had no complaints about his ability to make an acceptable video.

This video also contained one of the rare occasions when Lizzie completely forgot about the camera. This necessitated a rather large cut that even Charlotte couldn't have made seamless. Not that Lizzie asked for her help editing this time. There was some footage she couldn't share even with her bestie. One particular sound she made when he started planting kisses along her jawline - well, some things were intended for William's ears alone.

As she watched the finished cut, she couldn't help noting that it marked more than one major transition in her life. The establishment of her relationship with William was only the beginning. She was also finishing grad school, embarking on her career, and moving to San Francisco. Her days of being a single, unemployed student living at home were over. It was the end of an era.

Then she knew what she had to do.

100

Filming the last video was hard, but not as hard as she thought. It was a celebration as well as a farewell. She was moving on to bigger and better things, and the same was true of all the important people in her life. She was proud of her videos, flaws and all. A good storyteller knew to end on a high note.

The editing was a joint effort between her and Charlotte. It seemed appropriate. There was really only one crisis during the process, and that was deciding whether to include her mother's surprise appearance at the end.

Well, maybe it was only fair to let her mother have the last word after all the jokes at her expense.

Postscript

It was such a relief to go about her life without self-censoring or worrying what she would have to edit out later. They went out for a celebratory dinner, she and William and Charlotte and Lydia, and she felt completely comfortable in her own skin for the first time in weeks.

There were a few wrinkles, of course. They asked the waiter to take a picture, not realizing he was some sort of aspiring photographer who proceeded to document the entire saga of Ricky Collins showing up and inviting himself into their circle. But afterwards, the pictures gave her a good laugh.

It gave her an idea. Why not throw her viewers one last bone? She wouldn't even have to edit anything.

There would be plenty of video editing in her new career. But she was done editing her life.


End file.
